Back in the spring of 2022, the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research’s ‘IT Needs of Active Research Survey’ was released, and four months later we provided summary results and actions that would be taken in response. The 2024 survey has just gone live (19th February), and we wanted to update you on the progress made. … Continue reading “IT Needs of Active Research Survey Progress – 18 months on”
Category: BEAR Service
BEAR on the move!
Keen eyed users of the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) web pages may have noticed that we are in the process of relocating our intranet content to its new home on the university internet. This is due to a university-wide move to relocate all content currently hosted on the intranet. The intranet is becoming increasingly unstable, … Continue reading “BEAR on the move!”
IT Needs of Active Research Survey News – BEAR
Written by Carol Sandys (Head of Advanced Research Computing) & Stephanie Thompson Thank you to everyone who took time to respond to the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research’s (PVC-R’s) ‘IT Needs of Active Research’ Survey (pdf of questions available below), open between 23 May to 1 July 2022. Whilst the response rate was lower than in … Continue reading “IT Needs of Active Research Survey News – BEAR”
Using BEAR to build a database of global forest disturbance data
In the second case study for September, we hear from one of our BEAR Champions, Nezha Acil, about how she has made use of BEAR storage, data processing and our training throughout her PhD, based on studying global forest disturbance data… My name is Nezha Acil and I am part of Thomas Pugh’s TreeMort team … Continue reading “Using BEAR to build a database of global forest disturbance data”
How Green is the BEAR? Sustainable Supercomputing
Last week we attended the University’s Sustainability Town Hall where we could be found on the IT Services stand, discussing our response to the challenge of delivering sustainable supercomputing. On our agenda for more than a decade, the major breakthrough for BEAR came with the adoption of direct liquid cooling in 2015. Read on to … Continue reading “How Green is the BEAR? Sustainable Supercomputing”
Requesting BEAR Services – 2022 changes
In April 2022 we have made some changes to how you can request BEAR services (including CaStLeS), and also changes to free vs. premium resources. In this post we’ll set out some of the changes, and help you choose the right forms to use. These changes were authorised by the Research Computing Management Committee in … Continue reading “Requesting BEAR Services – 2022 changes”
New Coding Club Starting Up in January!
[For sessions in May, June and July see here: https://blog.bham.ac.uk/bear/2022/04/26/further-codingclub-sessions-may-july/ ] We are setting up a Coding Club from January for researchers and staff at the University of Birmingham to help them meet the goal of the Software Sustainability Institute of “Better Software, Better Research” i.e. if the software is incorrect then the resulting research … Continue reading “New Coding Club Starting Up in January!”
Open Research Forum
The Open Research Forum event was a 4-event series that focussed on highlighting the opportunities of cross-discipline engagement with Open Science through practical examples presented by UoB staff and external colleagues. The event aired ( via Zoom ) through lunch time sessions over 4 days and covered Day 1 : Launch Event Day 2 : … Continue reading “Open Research Forum”
BEAR DataShare : End of Service
Update – 21st January 2022 11am The BEAR DataShare service has now been retired and you will no longer be able to login via the web portal https://beardatashare.bham.ac.uk. Any data synced to your computer via the BEAR DataShare Client will remain on your computer but changes made will no longer be synced with anyone that … Continue reading “BEAR DataShare : End of Service”
Stabilising BEAR
Over the past few months we’ve had a number of service issues with BEAR and this is something we’d really like to apologise for – we pride ourselves on providing excellent services and recently we’ve not lived up to that. Sorry about this! 🙇🏻 I thought I’d take some time to explain some of the issues … Continue reading “Stabilising BEAR”